Chapter 2
I am a regular on Listings, a soapy drama about shady but incredibly attractive real estate agents who use their properties to conceal their lives of crime.
It’s a shitty show but wildly popular, in its sixth season, and I got in at the beginning, playing Lilias Harvey, the sexy, mean secretary.
Not a huge role, but enough to eventually buy a nice condo and have a modicum of notoriety in the city.
It’s the biggest break I’ve ever had as an actor, though not the most artistically fulfilling one.
I have been begging the producers to give me more to do, to let me show more range.
They are “thinking about it,” they tell me.
This season revolved around a new star, Nick Nolan as Ryder Atlas, a real estate tycoon and undercover detective.
Nick is heart-stoppingly handsome, built, and blond, with intense blue eyes and rock star vibes.
He high-fives every crew member on set; he is magnetic and gorgeous, with that magic capacity for making anything or anyone within his notice feel like the center of his whole world. And as it happens, he noticed me.
We didn’t meet until the season Christmas party five months ago, where he caught my eye across the room, strode over to me, and said, “I’ve been waiting forever to meet you, gorgeous.” He does better with a script.
I had only been in love the one time. Considering the string of assholes that followed, this was pretty on brand.
It seemed like we might have sex. I liked that idea.
We did. After a few too many cocktails, he pulled me into the coat check and hiked up my dress around my waist. He didn’t kiss my mouth, which seemed hot at the time, very Pretty Woman, then right as I came, he brushed his lips softly to mine, breathing in my cries. And I was his.
For a while, it was fun. I was so his that I didn’t care that he didn’t want to go public with the relationship.
It wasn’t exactly a relationship anyway.
We went to work, we went back to his place for sex.
We went to glitzy show events separately, never speaking, never touching, and for a long time, it felt like a thrilling game, our secret.
There were sacred, rare dinners in private rooms of fancy restaurants and one perfect weekend in New York, where we only left the hotel room for ice cream and champagne.
I felt drunk on him, fizzed up on chemicals that never seemed to land, and for about five months, it was total bliss.
At work, we feigned professionalism, but everyone knew.
Sometimes he stuck his head into my trailer, and I pulled him in for quick, furious sex that made the hair and makeup team grumble that they didn’t have time for touch-ups.
No one said much, aside from that. The star can do pretty much whatever he wants. For five months, he did.
It is all good until we are lying in bed the morning of the season wrap party.
“So, I have news,” he murmurs into my hair. I know, by now, to wait for him. He hates it when people step on his lines. He takes a dramatic breath. “I’m going to LA for a few months.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say mildly, but my mind has started spinning. I was looking forward to our summer off together.
“Babe.” He sits up, turning to me. “I booked Lego Batman.” He beams expectantly.
“Um, what? Wasn’t that . . . already made?”
“It’s the live-action version!”
“Isn’t that just . . . Batman?”
“No.” He looks disappointed in me, sorry for me, even. “No, babe, this is the live-action version of the Lego version.”
“So, live Batman . . .”
“With Lego.”
“Um, and you are playing . . . ?”
“Lego Batman. Duh.”
“Wow. Okay, um, so, congratulations.” I pause. “That’s . . . creatively . . . interesting to you?”
He frowns. “You don’t sound very proud of me.”
“I’m proud of you,” I say. “I’m surprised you never mentioned this.”
“It just happened. I flew out this week.” He told me he was in a meeting, but he didn’t say for what.
“Okay, well . . . So how long are you gone for?”
“All summer,” he says. “I might have to miss a few episodes next season, but the producers think it will boost viewing if I’m in a big blockbuster, so . . .”
“Yeah, sure.” I pause, trying to gather my thoughts. “So, all summer. I guess I could fly out . . . maybe even stay with you for a few weeks? I’m free, as you know . . .”
“Oh.” He looks concerned. “Oh, yeah, no, babe. That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?” But I know.
“I mean, we aren’t, you know, public.” He looks at me with practiced tenderness. “We aren’t even really official. You know that, babe.”
I am quiet. He strokes my face, then my hair, then my arm, as though I am some found kitten, as though I simply require a rote amount of pacifying before he gets more sex. “It’s been five months,” I say finally. I can feel it coming. I know what I have to do.
“I mean, yeah . . . really? Cool.”
“It’s been five months, and you have all but kept me under a rock, and now you’re just taking off for, what? Three months? And you don’t want to see me.”
“I’m just going to be pretty busy . . .”
I get out of bed and start to put my clothes on from my bag on the floor.
I don’t have so much as a toothbrush here.
“Yeah, okay. I get it.” I go to the bathroom and close the door behind me, angry tears rising fast. I splash water on my face, but they still burn down my cheeks.
I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m bed rumpled, my face blotchy, but I am still youngish.
I am widely considered conventionally attractive.
My body is to die for. I look more closely at myself, suddenly ashamed that my first and only assessment of myself is of my appearance.
But it seems that’s all I am these days.
It’s time. The last five months have been nice.
Really, really nice, actually. I had hoped maybe we had more in us.
But I can see the cracks in the veneer, and it’s time to do what I always do. I open the door.
“Yeah, no,” I say. He has already moved on to his phone.
“No, what, babe?” he asks absently.
“I’m actually done here.”
He barely looks up. “What do you mean?”
“Put your phone down, Nick. I’m breaking up with you.”
His head snaps up. “What?” He looks at me, alarmed.
“I don’t factor anywhere in your decisions, in your life. You don’t care about me.”
“I do!” A switch has flipped. Suddenly he is pleading. “I do!”
“You don’t.” I want to spew a litany of complaints: I don’t like who I am with you. I don’t like what you bring out in me. I don’t recognize myself anymore. The person I am angriest at, I realize, is myself. “It’s fine. Go to LA. Be Batman.”
“Lego Batman.” He sulks.
“It’s not a big deal. I thought maybe it was . . . more. But thank you, you’ve helped me see I was wrong, so . . .” I look around, but there is nothing to take with me except my bag and my rage. “I promise not to make a thing of this at work, but, yeah, we’re done here.”
He looks at me. For a moment, it seems like he’s actually surprised, like he’s actually hurt, but he covers it quickly with a hard look I’ve only ever seen on-screen. “Fine.” He returns to his phone. “Whatever.”
If I know one thing about this man, it’s that he can’t handle rejection. My only power move here is to end it first.
Leaving his building, walking out onto the street, I feel a lightness.
Relief. Agency. It’s been five months since I’ve had to think for myself.
This is good, I think. The season has wrapped; we have three months for everything to blow over, and we barely worked together anyway.
There is an underlying sadness—deep down, I have real feelings about this—but something in me snapped back there.
I need to be able to look in a mirror and see myself.
I want to skip the wrap party, but it will raise suspicion, so instead I put on the silver chain mail minidress I bought for the occasion.
Nick loved it, and on one hand, I want no further connection to him, but I also want to make him suffer just a little.
Just enough to miss me. I do a shimmery, smoky eye and a bright-berry lip.
Just for tonight, I still need the disguise.
I arrive late to the party, looking good, feeling increasingly victorious, and I run through the months of nonsense I submitted to.
Nick would disappear and not tell me where he’d been for days.
He never wanted to confirm our relationship despite plenty of online speculation, and he never, ever stayed at my place.
It was always his place, his schedule, his terms. The thought of my parents’ offer flickers in me.
I am a sought-after actress! I am turning down Shakespeare. I can turn down Nick Nolan.
I feel the party pulsing before I even arrive.
I walk in, knowing full well that the party lights turn my dress into a disco ball, that I light up the floor as I walk through to the bar.
People separate, some giving me small smiles, some turning conspicuously away, some whispering as I pass.
At first, I think it’s the dress, but when I reach Nisha, my closest show friend, who plays a lead in the show, at the bar, and her eyes fill with tears, I know something is up. She hands me a drink.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “People are being weird.”
“There have been rumblings,” she murmurs.
“Of what?”
“You need to talk to Jay . . .”
“Nisha, what do you know? Tell me!”
“You might be in trouble . . . I don’t know . . .”
“I broke up with Nick this morning,” I say. “Looks like he told everyone . . .”
“He wouldn’t tell people you were together,” she says. “I doubt he’s telling people you dumped him. Can you even dump someone who won’t admit they’re dating you?”
“Wow, thanks.” I take a sip of my drink. Tequila soda. I look for Nick, but he isn’t even there.
“It’s a double,” says Nisha. “I had a feeling.”
I turn to her, but she is facing out to the dance floor. “Do you know something?” She doesn’t look at me.
“No. I know nothing,” she says. “But I have a feeling you need to talk to Jay.”
I scan the room for our showrunner Jay, a narcissistic man-child who is always half a syllable away from a #MeToo moment. He catches my eye and tilts his head toward the balcony.
It’s cold out there, and I feel naked in my little dress. Jay runs his eyes over me out of habit before he clears his throat awkwardly.
“I’m sorry, Miranda. They’re not renewing you for next season.”
“What? How?” I know, though. Nick.
“Um, we have tweaked the next episode, and your character is going to take a job in LA.”
The irony.
“Any chances of a spin-off?” I ask dryly, my stomach flipping.
“Ha! Man, we are really going to miss that wit. Okay, so, of course, you’ll be paid for the rest of the episodes we booked you for. We just . . . yeah, this will be your last one. So sorry. You get it.”
I do not get it. I do not pretend to get it. “But, Jay, you’ve got to tell me why.”
There is a long pause. “Ah, well, I think it’s just, like, the vibes on set?”
“You’re firing me for my consensual relationship with my costar?”
“Well, to be fair, you were never, like, a star.”
“Jay, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s just because that relationship . . . ended.” He clears his throat again. “Unfortunately, we are sort of tied to . . .”
“Nick did this,” I say.
“I can’t discuss the details.” He pauses. “But between you and me—and, I mean, for real—he said it was him or you. Our hands are tied. Whatever went down with you two must have been . . .”
“What went down between us has ended, but that has nothing to do with work.”
Jay purses his lips. “Yeah, so, unfortunately, it does,” he says.
“Gotta keep the stars happy, am I right? When it comes down to it, you’re replaceable.
” He shrugs, like we are both in this predicament, like it is up to both of us to get through this.
“Do you . . . Should I hug you?” he asks, eyeing the dress again.
“You can fuck yourself,” I say. I pull open the balcony door, and everyone who was watching us through the window does an about-face, pretending to look at their drinks, their feet, their phones.
I throw my shoulders back and walk slowly across the dance floor to the coat check, where a young woman, some aspiring actress, probably, hands me my jacket.
“Have a great night!” she bleats, and I slip out.
Two breakups in one day. I stand out front, waiting for an Uber, alone, shaken, and angry.
Nick and I . . . If I’m honest, we were never going to last. He all but made me break up with myself.
But the show, however mediocre, has been my livelihood, my life, for six years.
Now I have neither. My defining details have all vanished in one day.
Back home, I drink two glasses of wine in my pajamas and contemplate my options.
I could call my agent in the morning and set up some auditions.
I could probably book something pretty easily.
But would it just be more of the same? Am I willing to put myself through the paces of auditioning again, throwing myself into another role that doesn’t matter to me?
The idea of those waiting rooms, learning sides, hours of prep for a rare callback, and selling myself over and over feels exhausting.
I could find a lawyer and challenge my dismissal, but if I know Nick, he’s probably already anticipated that; there was likely some hushed boardroom conversation about me, some found loophole allowing them to fire me.
I did this to myself. I dumped a movie star, and he got me fired from the shitty show I didn’t love. And now suddenly, my life is blank and also wide open.
My phone pings. Nick.
I miss you, babe.
I’m sorry.
I stare at the words.
I’m not doing this anymore.
I think again of my parents’ offer. Theater. Shakespeare. Midsummer’s. Theo. It might be good to get out of here. Just a break: a couple of months of rehearsal, a two-week run, then I can come back and start fresh.
I call my parents.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
A week later, I find a subletter for my condo for the summer, the niece of another actor on the show. I’m going to be gone for three months, tops. I pack a couple of suitcases, stuff them into my car, and drive out of the city. I hope it burns behind me.